This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument for generating sound according to vibrations of a member vibrated for musical performance and, more particularly, to an electronic musical instrument, such as an electronic percussion instrument called an electronic drum.
Heretofore, various electronic musical instruments called electronic drums have been developed. Such electronic drums are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,551,580 (patented on Dec. 29, 1970), U.S. Pat. No. 3,553,339 (patented on Jan. 5, 1971), U.S. Pat. No. 3,956,959 (patented on May 18, 1976), U.S. Pat. No. 4,418,598 (patented on Dec. 6, 1983), and U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,412 (patented on Oct. 30, 1984).
In any of these prior art electronic musical instruments, vibrations produced by striking a vibration member called a pad with a drumstick or a hand is converted by a pick-up or a transducer into an electric signal, and an amplifier is controlled for tone volume control according to this electric signal.
This means that a circuit constituting the electronic drum performs analog signal-processing. This is unsatisfactory from the point of view of obtaining a variety of percussion instrument sounds, and thus the prior art electronic drum lacks flexibility.